The illegal immigrant whose shootout with an Arkansas sheriff’s deputy last week was caught on a dashboard cam and went viral was in the U.S. under the Obama-era DACA program, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Monday.
Luis Cobos-Cenobio, 29, faces charges of terrorism and attempted capital murder after a shooting spree that saw him open fire at on police during two separate confrontations as he tried to escape a routine traffic stop last week, authorities said.
Mr. Cobos-Cenobio had at least two previous arrests, officials said, including one misdemeanor charge in 2015 that brought him to ICE’s attention. But the Obama administration, which was in office at the time, concluded he wasn’t a danger, and declined to pursue deportation.
“ICE did not lodge a detainer against Mr. Cobos-Cenobio in 2015 as he is a DACA recipient and did not meet the threshold for enforcement under the DHS enforcement priorities in place at that time,” the agency told The Washington Times.
ICE said Mr. Cobos-Cenobio also appears to have been arrested on another misdemeanor charge earlier this year, but the federal agency didn’t get notified, so it couldn’t place a detainer to effectuate his deportation. . . .
DACA is the deportation amnesty President Obama announced in 2012 to grant tentative legal status to illegal immigrant “Dreamers.”
The Obama administration concluded that even illegal immigrants with some criminal charges should be eligible for DACA, which explains how Mr. Cobos-Cenobio’s 2015 arrest on drug possession charges did not cause him to be expelled from the program, much less be deported.“This is the kind of thing that happens when you don’t enforce standards,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “The idea that DACAs are all choir boys is obviously untrue, and yet the Obama administration was much too willing to let people with criminal records avoid deportation.”